This dashboard summarizes almost all of the metrics and targets described in the 2017-2020 Ontario University Strategic Mandate Agreements (SMA2). These metrics and targets are all available on the MTCU website and other locations, but I have yet to find a comparison of system-wide metrics or compilation of the institutional… Read More »Almost All SMA2 Metrics & Targets In a Dashboard

The Ministry of Colleges and Universities are finishing their bilateral discussions with colleges and universities towards the establishment of SMA3. Consultations have largely concluded with sub-institutional stakeholders and now SMA3 drafts are circulating. March 31st, 2020 is when SMA2 expires and SMA3 is finalized. The University of Windsor has an… Read More »Getting Ready for SMA3

One of my motivations for compiling this information was to highlight that even the twenty-one system-wide metrics, did not have system-wide methods for measuring targets. Practically, each university has been able to provide public updates based on these measures for their first-year SMA report (Brock University, University of Toronto, Western… Read More »A Bounty of Metrics, A Bafflegab of Measures and Targets

Did the roadmap for differentiation was first proposed in the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario’s (HEQCO’s) 2010 report The Benefits of Greater Differentiation of Ontario’s University Sector (Weingarten & Deller) and the subsequent framework created by MTCU in 2013 yield differentiated SMAs for SMA2? I used a corpus-based critical… Read More »How Universities Describe Themselves in SMA2

I’m a fan of Voyant Tools for web-based text reading and analysis. If you are looking for a search engine for SMA2, this is it. Open in a new tab The corpus includes all 21 University 2017-2020 SMAs. If you are looking for a search engine for SMA2, this is… Read More »Ontario’s SMA2’s Automated Textual Analysis

Not all 2017-2020 SMAs include numeric targets for citations and total papers published or per faculty member. These types of targets can be difficult to set, measure and agree on, as Guelph University’s SMA comments: ..it is worth noting, that the focus of the system-wide metrics identified in the table… Read More »Citations and Published Papers

After reading all of Ontario’s University SMAs it is clear that they all share the following basic structure, which has been indented to reflect the hierarchy suggested by interpreting the formatting of the MTCU web version, the institutionally hosted signed PDF versions, and the presences of numbering in the SMAs… Read More »Ontario SMA2’s Basic Document Structure

From 2017 to 2020 Ontario universities’ growth and 4 percent each of university’s funding from the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities (MTCU) is governed by individual Strategic Mandate Agreements (SMAs) struck between MTCU and each University. A portion of Ontario Universities’ ongoing relationship with MTCU and the provincial government… Read More »Ontario Universities’ 2017-2020 Strategic Mandate Agreements with MTCU